The Breadwinner: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Parvana cautiously calls out, but she can’t see anything in the darkness. She lights three of her matches and finally finds the woman huddled against a wall. The woman is crying too hard to give her name, so Parvana introduces herself using both her female and male identities. Parvana invites the woman to come home with her, but she realizes they have a problem when she lights another match: the woman isn’t wearing a burqa. Parvana offers to go fetch one so the woman can come home with her, but the woman grabs onto Parvana’s arm. The woman doesn’t let go, even when Parvana says she must go home so Mrs. Weera doesn’t worry. Finally, Parvana offers the woman a snack and sits down to think.

Parvana decides that they should wait until dark and then head to her apartment together. The woman doesn’t have a chador and Parvana doesn’t have her scarf, so they’ll have to hope no one sees them. They settle just inside the doorway so they can watch for the dark of night. Kabul has been under curfew for several decades and bombings destroyed most streetlights, so it’s very dark at night. Mother used to lament that Kabul was once “the hot spot of central Asia” and reminisce about eating ice cream in the streets at midnight.

When it’s dark, Parvana leads the woman out onto the street. She tells herself that she’s Malali, though it’s hard to feel the part with her tray of cigarettes. Parvana almost tells the woman to walk more quietly—the Taliban made it a crime for women to make noise while they walk—but she remembers that since this woman is out without a burqa and they’re out after curfew, noise will be the least of their problems if they get caught. Parvana thinks back to the stadium and thinks she doesn’t want to know what the Taliban might do to her. They avoid headlights, soldiers, and uneven pavement, but they finally reach the apartment.

Mrs. Weera hugs Parvana and the woman. Parvana quickly explains the situation and Mrs. Weera takes the woman to clean up. Parvana notices that the woman looks younger than Nooria. She sets out supper and finds clothes for the woman while Mrs. Weera and the woman are in the bathroom. When Mrs. Weera and the woman emerge, the woman looks exhausted but less terrified. She falls asleep quickly. It’s not until the following night that the woman can speak. She introduces herself as Homa and says that she escaped from Mazar-e-Sharif just after the Taliban took the city. Homa explains that the Taliban went into every house looking for enemies. They took her father and brother outside and shot them, and then they shot Homa’s mother when she hit the soldiers. Homa survived by hiding in a closet.

Homa says that after a while, she went downstairs. Soldiers forbade her and others to move or cover their family members’ bodies. They also told Homa to stay inside. She was so afraid that she left in the dark. As she ran, she saw wild dogs eating bodies. This was too much for her, so she hid in a truck among bundles. It stopped in Kabul, and she hid in the building where Parvana found her. Homa starts to sob and gasps that she left her family for the dogs to eat. Homa cries until she falls asleep.

Mrs. Weera assures Parvana that Mother and Nooria are safe, but Parvana feels hopeless. She crawls onto the toshak and stays there for two days. She insists to Mrs. Weera that the women in her family do this when they’re sad, but Mrs. Weera points out that the women in Parvana’s family also get up and fight back. Finally, late on the second day, Shauzia appears. Mrs. Weera takes Shauzia onto the landing and then, Shauzia sits beside Parvana. After talking for a bit, Shauzia says she doesn’t like working alone and asks Parvana to come back. Parvana knows she can’t refuse. Part of her wants to leave everything behind, but another part of her wants to be Shauzia’s friend. Parvana returns to work, but she feels like she’s living in a nightmare. Things start to look up when one afternoon, Parvana discovers two men helping Father to the apartment.